Before you decide on undertaking any evidence synthesis project, particularly a Systematic Review, it is best to assemble the team that will be involved in this process. The team should be composed of at least two people, one of whom must be a subject specialist and a librarian.
Developing a well-developed and answerable research question is one of the most important steps in the evidence synthesis process. It forms the basis of your search, and determines the type of study you undertake. This is not always a linear process.
Review existing literature, identify a gap in your field, and formulate a clear question for which you are trying to find an answer. An example question would be:
Developing a research question is often a time-consuming and reiterative process. Frameworks have been developed to guide the development of appropriate research questions for different types of studies. They can help team members clarify and refine the scope of their question. For example, if the population is Alzheimer patients, is it all Alzheimer patients or just a segment of them?
Not all topics fit perfectly into a framework; if that happens, use the parts of the framework that fit.
PICO (Population/Problem, Intervention/Exposure, Comparison, Outcome) used for quantitative studies, is the most common framework, but not always the most suitable for reviews outside the health sciences.
Other frameworks like SPICE (Setting, Perspective, Intervention/Exposure, Comparison, Evaluation), and SPIDER (Sample, Phenomenon of Interest, Design, Evaluation, Study Type) are used for qualitative or mixed methods studies.
This research guide gives additional information about frameworks.
Different guidelines are used for documenting and reporting the protocols of your systematic review, before the review is conducted. The protocol is created following whatever guideline you select.
Citation management software are time-saving tools when doing evidence synthesis. They help researchers store and organize their citations during the searching process, and help with deduplicating citations before screening and analyzing of results.